Storey's Guide to Raising Chickens (3 page)

Feather patterns include barred, penciled, spangled, and laced.

Commercial production lines are often hybrids — parented by a hen of one breed and a cock of another — developed for efficient egg or meat production. Commercial meat strains and brown-egg layers are usually true hybrids. Commercial white-egg layers, on the other hand, are not hybrids in the strictest sense, since they are bred from different strains of the same breed and variety — single-comb white Leghorn.

Whether hybrid or purebred, birds within a strain are so typical of the strain that an experienced person can recognize the strain at a glance. An established strain is usually identified by its developer’s name — commonly a corporate name — for meat or egg production strains, and the breeder’s name for noncommercial strains, such as those bred for exhibition, fly tying, and illegal cockfighting.

Learning about strains becomes important if you decide to specialize in a specific breed and discover your chickens do not entirely fit the published breed profiles relative to such things as temperament, rate of egg production, size or shape, and so on. You then have the choice of seeking a more suitable strain or developing your own strain through selective breeding.

BREED BY COMB STYLE

Way back in time, all of today’s many breeds, varieties, and strains had a single origin: the wild red jungle fowl of Southeast Asia. Over tens of thousands of years, chicken keepers selectively bred their flocks to favor different combinations of characteristics related to economics, aesthetics, and other factors, such as aggressiveness or duration of the cocks’ crow.

The availability of all these various breeds, varieties, and strains ranges widely from common (and therefore inexpensive) to extremely rare (and therefore quite dear). While crossbred production strains are as common as dirt, pure strains of some breeds can be hard to come by. Not every hen that lays a blue egg is an Ameraucana or Araucana, for example, and most hens sold as New Hampshires are crossed with Rhode Island Reds or some other production breed. Indeed, among the brown-egg-laying “pure” New Hampshire hens I once bought, some laid blue eggs.

If you have never seen or tasted homegrown eggs, you will be amazed at their superior color and flavor. All hens, unless they are old or ill, lay eggs. Breeds known as “layers” lay nearly an egg a day for long periods at a time. Other breeds might enjoy longer rest periods between bouts of laying, or else go broody — have such a strong nesting instinct they’d rather hatch eggs than lay them. Still others may be just as prolific as the typical egg breeds but eat more feed per dozen eggs. Efficient laying hens share four desirable characteristics:

They lay a large numbers of eggs per year.

They have small bodies.

They begin laying at 4 to 5 months of age.

They are not inclined to nest.

The best layers average between 250 and 280 eggs per year, although individual birds may exceed 300. Compared to larger hens, small-bodied birds need less feed to maintain muscle mass. Purebred hens rarely match the laying abilities and efficiency of commercially bred strains but can still be efficient enough for a backyard flock. Since a hen stops laying once she begins to
set
(nest), the best layers don’t readily go broody.

Some of the Mediterranean breeds, especially Leghorn, are particularly efficient layers. These breeds, and a few others specializing in egg production, tend to be high strung, however, and therefore not much fun to work with, especially
if you take up chicken keeping for relaxation. Another characteristic of Mediterraneans is that they lay white-shelled eggs.